The Ocean Cleanup Project Removes Over 100,000kg Of Plastic From Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Ocean Cleanup project has removed over 100-thousand kilograms (220-thousand pounds) of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The Dutch nonprofit organization behind the largest ocean cleanup project in history has reached a monumental milestone. The Ocean Cleanup announced on Twitter that they had removed more than 100-thousand kilograms of plastic from the gyre of trash in the central North Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Ocean Cleanup was started in 2013 by then 18-year-old Dutch-born inventor-entrepreneur Boyan Slat with a goal of using technology to clean up the world’s waterways. After testing multiple versions of their ocean cleaning technology in the North Sea, the group set their sights on the GPGP in 2018. Slat says that it took them years to collect the first 8-thousand kilograms of plastic, but in the last few weeks they’ve been collecting that amount every four days.
The milestone is important because The Ocean Cleanup estimates that 100-thousand kilograms represents about one-one thousandths (1/1000 or 0.1%) of the total amount of trash in the GPGP. They believe the newest version of their tech will be able to collect that amount every month and if they can get ten of their machines out there cleaning up the Pacific ocean, they’ll be removing that much every few days. Of course, the problem will never go away as long as people are careless with their garbage, but for the first time ever, someone is making a significant dent in the existing problem.
